Let's get this out of the way up front: it's not true that people don't read on the Web. They do.

Gerald Marzorati, Editor of The New York Times Magazine, has revealed that "contrary to conventional wisdom, it's our longest pieces that attract the most online traffic." Slate's Fresca initiative -- a program requiring its editorial staff to take 4-6 weeks to investigate and write up in-depth pieces -- found the same thing, netting millions of page views for its long-form journalism.

On a smaller scale, NTEN's own web analytics show that, by and large, our carefully considered, better written, longer blog posts yield much longer time-on-page, particularly during the first few days they're up, than our regular, written-for-the-web fare.

So, it may be a good idea to spend more time on your blog posts. We're working on a style guide that will codify our best practices around editing for the web, and we thought we'd give you a preview, so you could give us your feedback. All you have to do to get to them is skim and scan through a brief history of why we think nobody reads on the web.

The Conventional Wisdom

It's Jakob Nielsen's fault. All the way back in 1997, when monitors were still 15" (if you had a big budget), he began one of the most influential blog posts of all time, "How Users Read on the Web" with: "They don't." And he had the research to back it up.

He is, of course, correct. For the most part, we don't read a lot of what we come across on the Web word-for-word. There are at least a couple of reasons for that:

• It's easier to find alternate sources of information, quickly. When we're in information-seeking mode, as we so often are on the Internet, we just scan pages looking for the information we want to find. If we don't find it quickly enough, we can much more easily jump to another source of information than we could with a stack of magazines. Google may not be making us stupid, but it may be making us lazy.
• It's physically harder to read on the web. Computer screens are not as easy on human eyes as the printed word because of the comparatively lousy resolution. A seminal study from the early 90s found that "... many of the reported differences between the media is basically visual rather than cognitive and lies in the fact that reading requires discrimination of characters and words from a background. The better the image quality is, the more reading from screen resembles reading from paper and hence the performance differences disappear."

Why Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong. Sort of.

Instead of saying, "People don't read on the web", it may be more accurate to say, "People don't read." Think about your own reading habits. How often do you pick up a newspaper or magazine -- just to be retro-chic, of course -- and read it cover to cover? I certainly don't. I skim through headlines, looking for items that interest me, read the first few paragraphs of an article that catches my eye, and then decide if it's worth my time. (Unless I'm on an airplane, in which case, even the ingredients listing of a bag of peanuts is fair game.) That was the genius of USA Today: they understood people's reading habits before the Internet.

We read what interests us, even if it happens to be on the Web. The problem, as I see it, is that conventional wisdom is leaving us with less of interest to read. The more it becomes accepted that we need to write for people to scan, the more we strip things down to facts and figures, bullet points and sub-heads, the more we may be moving further away from what our audiences actually want.

Go back and take a look at Nielsen's article again, specifically the sample text that proved to be the most "usable". Now, tell me why you would want to read it -- unless you were looking for those specific facts.

The idea that people don't read on the web may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Built-in Nonprofit Advantage

People read what they're interested in, and almost by definition, our core audiences are interested in what we do. Sure, there will always be people scanning through your web site, looking for a place to donate, or the figures they need to give them reason to donate. Your site design should reflect that. There will also be folks just passing through, who found your site through a search engine and probably aren't interested in what you're doing. That's okay: "Everybody" is not a target audience.

But when you're telling your organization's stories, when you're attempting to connect with your constituents, you may be better served to write more than less, to use more style and personality than less, to write with some passion for what you're doing.

Results will, of course, vary -- and you should keep track of your web analytics -- but bear this in mind: that second problem with reading online, that it's physically harder, won't be true for much longer. The screen on Apple's iPhone 4 is sharper than print. Once the rest of our screens catch up, and portable devices make us more comfortable reading online -- as Jakob Nielsen's more recent research has found -- people may grow hungrier for good content.

Let's try to stay ahead of the curve.

Editing for the Web

First off, your organization needs an editor. The best writers in the world have people looking over their shoulders, so even if you don't have a trained wordsmith on staff, just getting another set of eyes on your content will make it more readable. Ideally, one person at your organization will take on the role of editor, to help ensure a consistency of voice.

As NTEN's de facto editor, I employ a few tricks to make our content as interesting as possible. A lot of them should be familiar to you already, but here are a few particulars:

• Understand conventional wisdom. Yes, yes, I know what I just wrote, but there's a lot of value in knowing how to use white space and paragraph breaks and subheadings to capture people's attention. You shouldn't break the rules before you know them.
• Read it out loud. Good writing has a rhythm and flow to it. When you're reading aloud, you shouldn't get stuck on particular clauses or phrases; if you do, you know that section needs work. This will also help you find the key sentences that may be best on their own lines, to catch the scanners. 
• Bring out the style and personality of your writer:
  • Most sentences should be short, but vary lengths to create a rhythm. Several short sentences can earn you something longer and more complicated.
  • Avoid repetitiveness (unless it's purposeful). Don't just use "many" over and over again, when you can substitute "a lot", "several", "thundering hordes", or the like. "Very, very" doesn't add anything to "very". In general, don't use particular nouns or verbs more than once in a paragraph when you have alternatives.
  • Vary your punctuation. A parenthetical can be cute (but multiple parentheticals can become a tic). Break up the work with dashes, colons, and, occasionally, semi-colons -- but not too many of any one.
  • Cut words that don't add anything. Phrases like "in my opinion" or "I think" are generally understood. At least half the time, "that" isn't necessary: "It is my opinion that my organization rocks" has nothing over "My organization rocks." Again, reading aloud will help you find unnecessary words. If it doesn't add to the meaning of a sentence, cut it.
• Don't worry about hurting your writers' feelings. If you're doing your job right, their articles will be improved, even if you excise their favorite Duran Duran references.
• Finally, please, please, please: run a spellchecker. (That repetition was completely necessary, thank you very much.) Since that won't catch everything, read each piece at least twice, preferably more. Aloud.

Did you read all the way through? Tell us what you think -- and feel free to add a few rules of your own.